


a mother's love

by transbuck



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, between 3x04 and 3x05, idk how to tag but its buck talking to his mom about everything thats going on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 21:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21143690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transbuck/pseuds/transbuck
Summary: While Buck's feeling lonely, he turns to the one person hecanturn to.





	a mother's love

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i had the idea for this fic right after watching 3x04, but haven't been able to finish it until now! i know it's been a hot second since i've written anything, but i've been struggling real hard with writing lately! i do have another episode based fic that's based off this most recent episode, 3x05, that's gonna be super sexy and fun, i'm hoping to get it done real fast, and then i'll get to work on the real fic y'all have been anticipating, the pta dads fic :)  
as usual, find me on tumblr @juliesjames! and without further ado, please enjoy!

Buck hasn’t been sleeping much lately. Nightmares and insomnia have been plaguing him consistently since the tsunami, and they’ve only gotten worse since the whole lawsuit began. He can’t be sure why he’s been wrestling so much with sleep, but he can only assume it has something to do with how  _ lonely  _ he’s been lately. It’s not like he  _ wants  _ to be alone - he misses his friends, his  _ family _ . But because of the lawsuit, he’s not allowed to see or talk to any of them. 

“You won’t be allowed to contact anyone in or associated with the 118,” the lawyer had told him. Buck thought he’d be just fine. He’s been there before, after all. Alone, without so much as his sister to talk to. He thought it’d be like falling back into an old routine. But it’s not like that at all. Instead, it leaves a hole in his chest that only seems to grow with each day that he’s in this forced solitude. He misses his friends. He misses his  _ sister _ . But they don’t miss him back, he tells himself. They don’t miss you, they don’t miss you, they don’t miss you. Reminding himself of that simple fact makes the loneliness ache just a little bit less.

But the ache always comes right back when he wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, shaking and stomach dropped down to the floor with fear. He used to be able to call his friends. To call Maddie. They’d always talk to him, help calm him down. He forgets that they don’t miss him (they don’t miss you, they don’t miss you, they don’t miss you) until he’s already gotten his phone out and unlocked and is staring down at the contacts page. Staring down at all the names that he can’t talk to hurts, and he’s not sure if he can rationalize another nightmare all by himself again. But then he comes across a familiar name. A name he hasn’t talked to in a while. A name that, most importantly, he’s  _ allowed  _ to talk to. So, without so much as a second thought, he clicks the name and clicks the call button before pressing his phone against his ear.

After a few rings, Buck starts to regret his decision. It’s late, he thinks, looking at the alarm clock on his bedside table that proudly reads  _ 12:07 AM.  _ He’s about to just hang up when an achingly familiar voice is finally pouring out of his phone. “Hello?”

Buck sniffles and forces back tears when he hears just that one word. “Mommy?” he asks shakily, and the more put together part of his brain curses him for sounding like he’s a little kid all over again.  _ You’re 28 years old, you shouldn’t be calling your mother that- _

“Hi, baby,” Mom says, gentle and quiet and warm, and Buck can’t keep the tears back any longer. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

It takes Buck a second to calm down enough to speak, but oddly enough, he doesn’t feel bad about it. With anyone else, he’d feel anxious and would try to force himself to talk, so as to not take up more time than he needs, but with his mother? He can feel her patience through the phone, can hear her telling him to take his time in the back of his mind. “I had a nightmare,” he finally says, voice breaking on the last word.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mom says quietly, and Buck can see her concerned face, and instead of it feeling pitying, it feels oddly comforting. “Do you want to tell me what happened? It’s okay if you can’t.”

Buck lets out a sob at that. God, he’s missed her. No matter how bad things were with his father, Mom was always there for him. He finds himself half lost in memories of Mom holding him while he was crying after a bad day, whether that was brought on by school or by his father. For once, he’s lost in  _ good  _ memories from his childhood, which is definitely different, but it’s welcome. “It was about… I don’t know if you heard, but, umm, there was a tsunami out here a few weeks ago?”

“Oh, yeah, I remember hearing about that,” Mom says. Then, as a gentle afterthought, “Were you there for it?”

Buck nods at first before realizing that she can’t see him. “Yeah,” he says quietly, shakily.

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” Mom murmurs. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

“It’s okay,” Buck mumbles, running a hand over his face. “I had Maddie and my friends to help me after it.”

“That’s great, honey,” Mom says sweetly. “How is Maddie? I haven’t spoken to her in a while.”

The dam breaks even more at that. How is Maddie? Buck wouldn’t know - he hasn’t spoken to her in a while either. “I don’t… I don’t know. I- I haven’t talked to her in a while either. I don’t… I don’t know.”

“What do you mean? Did you get into a fight?”

“No? I don’t… Kind of? I don’t- I don’t know, I don’t, I’m sorry-”

“Hey, hey, baby, it’s okay, you’re okay,” Mom says gently, and Buck wishes more than anything that she was there with him because he misses being held in her arms so much, he misses when she would kiss the top of his head and shush him gently, he misses  _ her _ . “Can you tell me what happened with you and Maddie? It’s okay if you don’t want to, but I’m here for you no matter what.”

“It’s a long story,” Buck manages through his tears.

“I got plenty of time, baby.”

Buck takes a slow, shaky breath. “Okay. Um. Well. I don’t really know where to start? I’m- Okay. You remember when I broke my leg? The whole, uhm, firetruck thing?”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Mom says quietly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you then, though.”

“It’s okay,” Buck murmurs before continuing on. “Well, um, after I got the cast off and did all the PT I needed to do and everything, I started, y’know, training for my LAFD recertification. And everything was great! Y’know, I- I- I set a new record and everything, and I was so  _ close _ . And then, umm, like, the day before I was gonna get to go back, I… I had a, um, pulmonary embolism.”

“Oh my God,” Mom murmurs, horrified. “I’m so sorry, baby, I didn’t know.”

“It was whatever. I was surrounded by a bunch of trained paramedics when it happened, so I was fine,” Buck says, idly picking at the seam of his sweatpants (he vaguely hears a voice in the back of his head that sounds eerily like Maddie telling him to knock it off before he picks a hole in the seam again, and isn’t that bittersweet?). “But, um, I guess I had three blood clots? One in my lungs, and two in the leg that I broke. So I had to go on blood thinners to be safe. But then the chief said I could come back but only on ‘light duty’.”

“‘Light duty’?” Mom asks. “What, like desk work?”

“ _ Exactly  _ like desk work.”

Mom lets out a sharp breath. “Oh, I’d loathe to be your deskmate, Mr. I’ve Never Heard Of Sitting Still.”

Buck can’t help but laugh a little at that despite himself. “Yeah, and I was pissed about it, y’know, so I, uh, I quit.”

“You quit.”

“Yeah.”

The silence from Mom is very telling. He can imagine her shaking her head at him in disbelief.

“I know it was a stupid decision, Mom.”

“I’m not saying it was  _ stupid _ ,” Mom says. “Just, perhaps not the most well thought through decision you’ve made.”

“Yeah, well, I know that now,” Buck replies. “But anyway, then the whole, umm, tsunami happened,” he continues with a vague wave of his hand.

“Do you want to talk about that a bit more?” Mom asks carefully.

Buck grimaces just a little bit, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Uh, maybe some other time?”

“That’s fine. You can talk to me about it whenever you want to, if you ever want to.”

Buck smiles at that. He’s not sure if he’ll ever be fully ready to talk about the events of that day, but to know that Mom will be there if and when he needs her? That’s pretty damn comforting. “Thanks. I really appreciate it. But, um, then after that, I realized I was stupid to quit, so I begged for my job back, and then I got a job as the Fire Marshal.”

“Ooh, Fire Marshal Buckley!” Mom says, grin evident in her voice. “That’s pretty exciting.”

“It was!” Buck replies, excited to be able to share something positive with his mother. “It’s not my dream job of course, but I got to be kinda like the boss, and it was kinda fun. I got to, like, oversee fire drills that the LAFD worked on, y’know? It was pretty cool. And, like, I was willing to do it because I decided I was done with quitting. ‘Cause, I mean, you know me, Mom. I’m not a quitter.”

“You’re a  _ fighter _ ,” Mom says gently.

“Yeah,” Buck says, briefly lost in the more negative memories from his childhood. Memories of fighting just to survive in his broken home. Memories of fighting towards a better and brighter future for himself. He doesn’t let himself stay trapped in the past for very long before he’s continuing on. “So I worked as hard as I could at that so I could keep working towards being a firefighter again. And, like, I knew that my Captain, Bobby, he was on my side, and he was fighting the chief and stuff to get me to be allowed to go back to work. He had my back.” Recounting that part of the story aches more than he wishes it would. He doesn’t like thinking about how he trusted Bobby the whole time. Trusted that Bobby was working just as hard, if not harder than, him. But then he wasn’t. It felt almost like he was a kid again, when he found out the truth, getting told by his father that he wouldn’t amount to anything. Except Bobby was a lot more tactful about it than his father ever was.

“Something tells me this Bobby guy didn’t actually have your back,” Mom says worriedly.

“Bingo,” Buck replies wearily. “Turns out,  _ he  _ was the one keeping me from going back to work. Like, he was telling the chief and everyone that I wasn’t ready yet and to not let me back on active duty. But I  _ am  _ ready. I’ve  _ been  _ ready. The embolism and the blood thinners were just a minor setback. And- and it’s not up to him, y’know, to decide if I’m ready or not. Like, physically, I’m ready. I’m  _ more  _ than ready. It’s up to  _ me  _ to decide if I’m ready emotionally and stuff and I’ve been ready to go back this entire time. And it’s just… It’s so  _ unfair _ . I didn’t ask for any of this happen to me!”

“You don’t deserve any of it, sweetheart,” Mom replies. “You deserve to be  _ trusted  _ by your Captain when you say that you are ready, and that you  _ do  _ want to go back to work. It doesn’t make sense that he’d fight the chief on it.”

“It  _ doesn’t _ make sense,” Buck repeats desperately. “It’s like… It feels like he thinks I’m going to make the same mistakes that he did. But I’m  _ not  _ gonna make his mistakes. Any mistakes I make will be, y’know, they’ll be my own. And it’s not fair that he’s not letting me make those mistakes so I can learn from them.”

“You’re right,” Mom says. “But that doesn’t explain why you haven’t spoken to your sister in a while.”

“Right,” Buck says, fiddling with the seam of his sweatpants all over again. Part of him almost doesn’t want to tell her about the lawsuit at all. There’s a mean voice in the back of his head that sounds an awful lot like his father that says that Mom’s just going to say he’s being stupid, he’s being dramatic, he should just drop the lawsuit about it and stop whining. There’s a more rational part of him that says he’s  _ not  _ being stupid, that he’s justified in his hurt and anger, but he’s so terrified that Mom won’t see it that way, and he doesn’t think he can handle it if she tells him as such.

“Baby?” Mom asks when Buck’s been silent for an awfully long time. “You there?”

“Yeah,” Buck says before taking a slow, shaky breath, blinking back tears as he tries to figure out how to say it. How to say that he’s suing the city and the department and his Captain for his job back and that because of it, he’s not allowed to talk to anyone in or associated with the department, and it’s just his luck that Maddie has to be associated with a firefighter. He sniffles, takes another slow breath to try and calm his nerves before beginning the only way he can think to begin. “So I’m suing. The- the state and the department and- and Bobby.” When Mom doesn’t say anything for a good long while, he starts to panic. The silence feels like confirmation, confirmation that he shouldn’t have done this, that he should just take it back and take what job the department will give him. “I- I know it’s stupid, and- and I can drop the suit in the morning or something, I know I’m just being dramatic and being a total baby about the whole thing-”

“No,” Mom interrupts, stern but loving in the way that only Mrs. Buckley can be. “No, it’s not stupid and you’re not being a baby. Perhaps the decision to sue is a little over the top, but your reasoning for it is perfectly justified. Your boss is treating you unfairly. You’ve been ready to return to work for a long time now, it seems like, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any fair reason for you to not be allowed to full, active duty as of right now.”

“But- but, y’know, the- the blood thinners,” Buck offers lamely.

“What, are you trying to convince me to be against you?” Mom asks, and Buck can practically see the stern and worried look on her face. “Baby, some blood thinners, they work in a way that allows you to go right back to your normal life without even having to think twice about it. The blood thinners don’t seem like the problem here. The problem here, it seems, is that your captain is projecting his own insecurities and his own faults on you, and he seems to think that it’s his job to protect you from any potential injuries. And yes, that should be a concern of his, your safety and health on the job, but if your doctors say that the blood thinners will not affect your going back into active duty, then he needs to  _ listen _ . Obviously, I don’t know how things work in California, and I certainly don’t know how things work in the fire department, but as far as I’m concerned, my baby’s being treated unfairly, and I don’t like it!”

“I don’t know what to  _ do _ , Mom,” Buck says and, without him even realizing it, a sob tears out of him, and he pulls his knees up and against his chest with his free arm. “I’m not- I’m not allowed to talk to any of my friends, and- and since Maddie’s  _ dating  _ a member of the 118, I’m not allowed to talk to her either, and I can’t  _ do this _ . I’m so  _ alone _ .”

“I can only imagine how difficult things have been for you, Evan,” Mom says in a voice that’s so gentle and loving that it only makes Buck cry harder. He  _ misses  _ her. He misses her so, so much, and he wants nothing more than for her to hold him and kiss his forehead and tell him all of these things in person. But she can’t hold him and she can’t kiss him and she can’t say these things to his face. Instead, she’s all the way across the country. “I will never be able to apologize enough for not being able to be there for you, baby. I am so, so sorry.” There’s something in her voice that tells Buck that she’s not just sorry for not having been there the last handful of months - something tells him that she’s apologizing for not being able to protect him from his father. He doesn’t let himself think about that much further, though, because he knows that if he starts thinking about  _ that _ , he’ll be an even bigger blubbering mess and he doesn’t want to be sobbing that much at… Well, last time he checked, it was 12:07. And now, as he looks at his alarm clock with tear blurred vision, he realizes it’s now 12:40 in the morning. Which means it’s 3:40 in the morning for his mother.  _ God _ .

“Thanks, Mom, but I should, umm, I should let you go, it’s really late, and I should probably try to get more sleep,” Buck says shakily, pulling his blankets aside and laying back down on his side before bringing them back up and over himself. “And I’m tired.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay, Evan?” Mom asks gently. “I can stay up if you still need me.” Buck knows she won’t be able to stay awake for much longer - he can hear her forcing back a yawn, and something about it leaves a warm feeling in his chest. The fact that his mother is so willing to stay up despite her obvious exhaustion just to take care of him makes him feel loved, makes him feel important.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Buck whispers, wiping at the tear tracks on his face. “It helped to talk about it. And now I don’t feel so stupid for the lawsuit.”

“Your captain is the one who’s being a real dumbass,” Mom says, which makes Buck burst out into surprised laughter. Mom laughs too, and for a second, everything feels okay. Once the laughter dies down, Mom continues, “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be okay,” Buck promises quietly.

“I’m gonna let you go, alright?” Mom says. “Try to get some sleep, Evan.”

“You too, Mom.”

“Goodnight, baby. Call me if you need me, okay?”

“I will,” Buck replies. Deep down, he always knew his mother was available to talk to whenever he needed her, but hearing her confirm it herself fills him with relief. “Is it okay if I call you tomorrow?”

“Of course, whatever you need.”

“Cool. G’night, Mom. I love you,” Buck says quietly.

“Goodnight, Evan. I love you, too,” Mom says, just as quiet.

Buck pulls his phone away from his ear and hangs up before setting it back down on his bedside table, plugging it back into the charger before settling back down. Being surrounded by silence again feels weird after having been talking to his mom for so long, but at this point, he’s far too exhausted to be nervous about the quiet. He takes a slow breath before letting his eyes fall shut. He’s not sure when this whole ordeal will be over, or when he’ll be allowed to talk to the people he loves again, but knowing that he has his mom in his corner makes him feel a lot less scared. As he drifts off to sleep, he finds himself feeling a lot more hopeful than he has in quite a while.


End file.
